


It's Only Love

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post-Endgame, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 15:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18594442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: A vignette, of sorts. Out amongst the stars.





	It's Only Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Schaudwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schaudwen/gifts).



> It's not perfect, nor is it polished. But I saw _Endgame_ this afternoon and had to work through some feelings. Here they are.
> 
> I'm dedicating this to Schaudwen because it's her birthday, and she always reminds me of what I love best about this pairing. <3

Thor drowses on the very edge of sleep, thoughts too heavy to allow him to drift away. It didn’t help, shifting bunks; this one might be roomier, but it hadn’t been the enclosed space keeping him awake.

“Thor.”

He yelps, though the sound is almost instantly cut off when he sits up only to strike his head on the low ceiling. His jaw is also forced to what feels a bone-shattering close. Swearing in four different languages, he falls back, not sure what hurts more: tongue or head.

But then he turns said head and it’s his heart that now threatens to explode.

“ _Lo—_ “

He doesn’t get far, a hand thrusting out to cover his mouth. “Shush,” he commands, as stern as Frigga had been at their childhood bathtime. “Don’t make so much noise, would you?”

He doesn’t. He can’t do much else but stare over that hand with eyes that are suddenly wet, stinging with salt. When said hand withdraws Thor still does not speak, instead gasping for breath; he now gulps it down as if suddenly starved of all oxygen. With his vision beginning to darken at its edges, chest tight, his hands clench to hard desperate fists.

“ _Gods_ ,” Loki mutters, and then he’s pushing at him, shoving him over. “Make me some room, Thor. Go on, _move_.”

And the moment Loki lays down beside him, Thor rolls over, gathers him in his arms and holds him so tight Loki gives a bruised gasp, as if all his ribs are suddenly collapsed. But Thor knows he’s survived worse. He’s been _dead_ , after all. Should be dead even now. So Thor just clutches tighter still, knowing this for a dream and not caring one whit. He’ll keep it as close as he can for as long as he can, and damn reality in the meantime.

“Thor, I’m alive. I’m _here_.” It’s still a long moment before Thor loosens his grasp, and it’s mainly because Loki takes a chunk of his hair in hand and pulls it as hard as he can.

“Stop that!”

“Yes, well, you’re suffocating me.” Thor allows him to pull back, but as soon as he goes for more than a few inches Thor just reels him back in. With a roll of his eyes Loki allows it. Though as far as Thor is concerned, the choice isn’t exactly his anyway.

But as the initial shock wears off, Thor finds all words have escaped him. Loki is close, his eyes searching and his breath steady, and Thor has nothing to say.

“Brother,” Loki says instead, and pauses. It’s so very unlike him to stumble over his words. It does not stop him from doing so now. “Brother, I _tried_ to come sooner.”

“Back from the dead, again?” Voice thick with tears, he tries to roughen his voice, finds himself hiccupping instead. “Loki, why did you leave me like that? _Again_?”

“I didn’t want to.” As habitual a liar as Loki can be, the truth of it seems set in his features, set in time itself. “I came when I could.”

There is so much he could say to that: a thousand accusations, a thousand more reprimands. Thor bothers with neither. It’s better to just hold him tight again, feeling tears trickle down his cheeks in silence, catching in his beard.

Loki allows it. Indeed, one hand shifts to the small of his back, there moving in soothing endless circles. This is a ghost of a movement so familiar; this is something their mother had done for them as children what seems lifetimes ago. Thor stays this way, does not move, revels in the fact that Loki goes nowhere, too.

Only when Thor’s breath has evened out, his body going limp and languid like a child rocked to sleep, does Loki speak again.

“Brother,” he says, and he sounds utterly vexed. “Brother, you got _fat_.”

And his hand moves from back to front, palm pressed to belly button and fingers splayed wide; Thor slaps at it, both irritated and suddenly ashamed.

“I’m still as strong as I ever was!”

“Yes, well.” Taking a breath, he lets it out slow and thoughtful. “Even Volstagg took a good two or three hundred years to develop a belly _quite_ this girth. What _do_ they put in that piss Midgard calls beer?”

“Loki.” The fingers move – and then they begin to tap, to dance, to _tickle_. “Loki, stop it!”

“Shhh,” he says, quite stern. “I am hiding us from the crew’s sight, but you don’t need to be so _loud_.”

He does settle a little, but not much. Rolling on his back to escape Loki’s relentless fingers, Thor stares up at the near ceiling of the bunk, throat very tight. In this semi-darkness he cannot help but recall their distant boyhood days. They had been so very long ago. But here they feel almost dangerously so close in memory, always precious, always treasured. They’d so often curled up close this way, both in the palace and on distant journeys, telling each other stories and secrets in their shared darkness. It often had seemed as though they were the only two creatures in the galaxy entire. Or at least, the only ones who mattered.

“I saw her,” he says, too sudden, and his voice breaks again. “Mother.”

Loki shifts at his side; though his voice remains even, Thor can feel the tension that moves through him, holds every muscle tight and trembling. “Did you?”

“I…” He cannot not speak of it, even now, even to his brother. “Oh, _Loki_. Loki, she…”

Again he holds him, though this time he does not quite cry. It’s not that he does not wish to. Nor is it that he knows his mother, were she here, would admonish him not to weep so over what has already long since passed. But Loki knows. Loki _knows_ , in a way no one else ever could, ever will.

“…do you know what my last words to her were?”

Thor, with eyes closed, sighs. “Loki, she loved you. She loved you so very dearly.”

“I told her she was not my mother.” He gasps on a breath, a strangled laugh that wishes to tear itself all to violent pieces. “I wanted to hurt her,” he adds, and now he is nothing but perfect self-inflicted misery. “But I only hurt myself twice as hard, and I wished immediately to take it back.” Fingers dig deep into where he clutches at his brother, head shaking, spine taut. “She was my mother. She _was_.”

“And she knew it.” Thor has closed his eyes, pressed his face to Loki’s hair; even where the scent has changed, he knows it. As he ever has. “Loki, she was mother to us both – and I know that she was always so very glad for it.”

Loki’s own tears fall and gather in silence, dampening and dampened by where his head lies buried between Thor’s neck and shoulder. He stays this way what seems such a very long time. There are so many questions yet to be asked. Thor finds he doesn’t want the answers. Not now. It’s more important to be this way. To be quiet, together. To be _together_.

It’s Loki who shifts first. Thor allows it, mostly because Loki is making no effort to rise. Instead he’s stroking his fingers first over, and then through Thor’s hair.

“You always did like it, the longer it was.”

“I did,” Loki allows. But he doesn’t bother to ask permission before those quick clever fingers begin to twist, begin to plait and braid. Thor keeps his eyes closed, as still and silent as any well-trained stallion, and lets his brother work his magic.

When he does eventually opens his eyes, Thor finds Loki but a breath from him. Everything about him this way is heartbreaking in its familiarity: his lips pressed together in concentration, rich green eyes tilted upward in their focus, clever fingers so deft about their work.

“May I kiss you?”

Loki’s gaze jumps immediately back, startled and – afraid? Perhaps not that. But he’s very much wary, hands stilled, body taut as the grey bruised sky before breaking storm.

“…what did you say?”

He hadn’t even though about it. Not really. It had just fallen out, coming as naturally to him as did thunder, as did lightning.

“I want to kiss you,” he says, perfectly easy, perfectly serious. “Will you allow it?”

“Thor.”

“I know it sounds idiotic—”

But he gets no further. Loki’s lips descend upon his, frantic and fierce and _smiling_ , and his arms come about that slim body in a motion so very familiar and so very new at the same time. He’s held Loki many a time before this – had been doing so but moments before. But this is different, this is demanding and desiring and desperate, and he’s never been so afraid and so sure of something in his entire long life.

Still, when Loki pulls back, begins working at the buttons of his borrowed shirt, Thor stills. Sensing the sudden shift in his temper, Loki pauses, sits up a little from where he has straddled Thor.

“Why, brother,” he sing-songs as though it doesn’t matter at all, for all Thor can see the terror in his eyes, “have you changed your mind so very soon? You always _were_ so quick to discard one buxom maiden for the next—”

“ _No_ ,” he says, deep, furious, enough to startle even Loki to silence. And he shakes his head, gaze skittering away, cheeks growing flushed. “It’s just…I don’t…you might…”

“I might what?” His furrowed brow relaxes, and Thor cringes at his realisation. “Oh. _Oh_. You think I won’t like this…additional part of you?”

“I’m hardly attractive this way, I know.”

“Hardly attractive?” Incredulous, now, it seems Loki would throw his hands to the sky if he could stretch them that far. “Thor, you could still bed the loveliest of creatures in all the galaxy like this.”

“I don’t want the loveliest creatures!” he almost shouts, though his voice lowers to possessive growl but a moment later. “I want _you_.”

Above him, Loki’s mouth works, as if trying so very hard not to permit a smile. “You really do need to work on your pillow talk, Thor.” But he lets it go that same moment, only shaking his head as his hands resume their work. “You needn’t worry, Thor. I don’t care how much fat you carry around your middle.”

Thor closes his hands over Loki’s, tightening them enough to hold them still. “Perhaps I do.”

Loki sits up a little straighter, as much as the cramped bunk will allow. For a moment he says nothing, only stares at him. Thor wilts a little under the regard, for all there’s nothing cruel to it. Only thoughtful. Loki had always been so clever at this: at taking in a situation, seeking solutions, applying the answer and taking his success.

He nods, sudden. “Thor.”

“What?”

“You must realise I love you, no matter how you look.” A tremor moves through him even as he smiles, always so very certain in announcing his triumphs. “As I know you love me, no matter my form.”

Thor opens his mouth to answer, but Loki’s next motion disallows any such thing. With a shimmer of green-golden seiðr, Loki now rises above him scarlet-eyed and blue of skin. Without thought Thor’s hands tighten on the thighs spread either side of his hips, digging deep enough in leathers to leave bruises.

“ _Loki_.”

“See?” Despite the certainty of his voice, every inch of him is shaking in Thor’s desperate grip. “You’re not running. You’re not screaming. You’re not reaching for that idiot weapon of yours.”

He’s so very afraid. In answer Thor surges up, closes both hands either side of his neck, and hauls him into a bruising kiss.

A moment later he’s falling, swearing, hands flying to his mouth. Loki, dislodged from his place, falls to the floor with him. Then he’s reaching for him, hauling him around and up and laughing and swearing and tutting, somehow managing all at once with his usual impossible beloved skill.

“Thor, you great _idiot_.” Batting Thor’s hands away, his own hands – once again pale of skin – shift in determined motion over frostbitten lips and tongue. “You didn’t have to do that!”

“Yeth I did,” he says, with difficulty, and Loki’s rolling his eyes and working the healing magic a little deeper. But Thor just stares at him. Knows the depth of what he has seen, of what Loki has done.

“I love you,” he says, and Loki snorts, pushes two fingers into his mouth to catch his tongue between their tingling seiðr.

“Yes, well, I suppose that was always a given.” His confidence is, as always, but a mask. But Thor can tell him otherwise. Can _show_ him otherwise, and he does so by suddenly twisting his tongue, by sucking those fingers deeper into his mouth.

Loki stills, stares at him. It’s such a novelty to startle him so that Thor chuckles around those fingers, watches a tremor rock his body.

And then Loki’s hauling him to his feet. “Strip,” he demands, even as he sheds his own clothes like a serpentine second skin. “Thor, are you listening to me? _Strip_.”

But for now Thor can only stare. It’s hardly the first time he’s seen his brother nude, but there’s a new element to this: one both alarming and wonderful. And he reaches forward, fingertips scarcely touching him, as though he expects his hands to slide right through him.

Loki takes a sharp breath. Then his hands are on Thor, in too many places all at once to be something other than seiðr. It doesn’t matter. He’s on his back in the bunk again in seconds, Loki clambering up upon him, settling between his spread thighs.

“You’re hopeless,” he declares, and Thor can only but laugh again.

“On the contrary,” he says, threading sure fingers though Loki’s dark hair, “now I have all the hope in the universe.”

Again, Loki is startled to silence. But still he moves, pushing their lips together as if he seeks to swallow down some of the naked honesty of his brother’s words. It doesn’t work. Every motion they make is brilliantly _loud_ , shouting their intentions to both this galaxy and all those beyond.

It’s awkward, with his belly between them like this. He’s never done it like this. Certainly he hasn’t taken anyone to bed since the fall of Asgard; he simply hadn’t desired anything of the sort. It had been so much easier to live life instead in an alcoholic haze, with only Korg and Meek’s varying games to alert him to the passage of time.

Loki doesn’t care. His cock throbs hard and hot, pressed to the curve of his belly. And his lips still demand everything of him, whether they’re on his own, or drifting over cheek and jaw and throat.

His own hands have been mostly tangled in Loki’s hair, but as his brother sets about sucking a deep bruise over one collarbone, Thor allows them to drift downward. The tight muscle of his ass fits perfectly into his palms, and when he squeezes them Loki pauses in his work to groan. The sound rumbles between them like brontide, and Thor’s cock perks up even higher.

“Brother,” he rasps, but he doesn’t quite know what he’s asking. It’s too much: all of this, so sudden and so strange. Loki knows it, too. One hand moves with a soothing shift through his hair, even as he cocks a grin, moves his lips to one ear.

“Try your fingers,” he says, a whisper barely on the edge of sound. “I’d rather enjoy that, I think.”

And his fingertips, just barely brushing where they meet at the space of Loki’s cheeks, feel warm, suddenly damp. Parting them, breath tight and gasping in his breath, he finds the source of it: a slick furled hole, awaiting attention.

He’s too impatient. Everyone has always said so, Loki most of all. But Loki arches his back, revealing his throat, groaning as Thor slides his middle finger deep. Drawing it back, he catches just the edge of it on the rim – and Loki bites down on his shoulder, fingernails digging into his shoulders. Thor can but laugh, dizzied and helpless.

“Are you enjoying this, then?”

“Shut _up_.” But it’s Loki that’s silenced when Thor first slides his index finger in to match the other, and then crooks them both. He’s taut and stretched tight, mouth opened on a shout that has no sound. And Thor grins, his own cock aching and hard where it presses against Loki’s own. Shifting his hips and his hand, he then raises an eyebrow.

“I thought you liked tricks, little brother?”

Loki glares at him, eyes damp and brilliantly green, and then nothing else matters. It’s messy and tangled and as uncomfortable as it is wonderful. But even as they bang their hands and clank teeth and find knees and elbows in ridiculous places, they chase their pleasure down – hunting it as wild and as true as any other prey they’ve sought out together.

But as they lie tangled together, breathing hard, coming down from impossible high, the sudden banging on the wall startles Thor one more time – though at least this time he manages not to crack his head while bolting upright. But the voice that follows almost makes him wish he’d done it hard enough to knock himself out.

“Hey! _Hey!_ Can you two keep it down in here? Some of us are trying to _work_!” A moment later, the voice adds, “And my work tends to _explode_. Like, a _lot_. Or at least it does, when people make me mess it up!”

“Oh, _gods_ ,” Thor groans, hands over his eyes. “Loki, you said you veiled us from sight!”

“Ah, but did I say anything about them _hearing_ us?” When Thor uncovers his eyes to give his little brother a suitable death glare, he finds Loki’s smile both brilliant and filled with teeth. “Oh, come, Thor, you know what a liar I am.”

“I hardly needed the demonstration,” he grumbled, but Loki starts laughing, his body shaking in mirth against his own: hard and heavy and _here_ , and he can hardly complain.

Loki doesn’t seem to agree; it’s barely a moment later when he arches up, nose crinkled and mouth slanted into a frown. “Ugh. We’re all _sticky_.”

“Kind of what happens when one makes love.”

Loki gives him a sideways look. “Must you word it that way?”

“What, you prefer me to say I fucked your brains out, then?”

“No need to be crass.” Pushing up, Loki separates their melded bodies and leaves the recycled air cool on Thor’s skin. But he pulls just out of range when Thor instinctively reaches for him, levering to his feet. Still, there’s a tilt of the purest mischief to his gaze when Loki says, almost careless, “Besides, you haven’t _really_ fucked my brains out. I rather think you’d need to get that monster of a cock up my ass to be worthy of _that_ little claim.”

For a moment his vision whites out completely: Thor wants nothing so much as to leap to his feet, to take his brother about one bicep and throw him down on the floor, and show him _exactly_ his own worth.

But he doesn’t. He watches instead as Loki scowls at the state of him – likely at the state of them _both_ – and magics up a bowl and washcloth. Thor could point out there are perfectly functional sanitary systems aboard the ship, but the scent of the water keeps his lips sealed. It holds the fragrance of Frigga’s herbs and flowers, rich and heady and _home_. He can’t even complain when Loki conjures up a second washcloth, dowses it in the water, and then promptly launches it at Thor’s head.

“Lovely to see your aim is as precise as ever.”

“I could have thrown it at your groin.”

“Mmm,” he muses, pushing the heated cloth against his face with both hands, inhaling deep of memory and magic. “But I don’t think you would.”

“Why ever not?”

Thor shifts the cloth just enough to give Loki a slanted glance from his blue eye. “I think you’re already getting rather too fond of the amusements you can find there.”

“Arrogant ass.” But he doesn’t deny anything, and Thor’s grin widens so far and so fast his face quite aches with it. He doesn’t care. It’s a companionable, easy silence in which they set themselves to rights again. Loki finishes first, and as Thor pulls his boots on he runs a hand through his hair, quirks a contemplative look.

“Do you wish to do my hair again, brother?”

“Not now.” The set of his lips seems to indicate he’s vaguely unhappy with the choice, though he shakes his head a second later. “There’s something I wish to show you.”

Stepping into the common room of the ship perhaps should be an awkward thing. Thor decides he doesn’t care. With one arm tight around Loki’s waist, he moves forward, still beaming. “Rabbit, I do apologise for disturbing your work.”

“Yeah, well, we could all have been atoms and dust, thanks to you,” he snaps back, one small paw aiming a screwdriver at him as if it could fire plasma. But the dark little eyes move quickly, locking onto his left. “Huh. So that’s your brother, right?”

“Loki.” Every molecule of his being vibrates with utter joy, the air electric and joyous. “This is Loki.”

“Yes, well, we’re not here for introductions,” Loki says, pleasant and smooth. “If you’ll excuse us, a moment?”

“Wait,” says Drax, eyes suddenly narrow, sharp. “Wait, did you say _brother_ —”

But they’re sweeping past; in the background he hears Mantis, her voice light and delighted as she says, “Their happiness is _wonderful_! It tastes like…honey, and sunshine, and battery acid!” Though he can’t help but smirk when he hears Quill’s subsequent entrance.

“Hey, did you say someone else is here? I didn’t say anyone could have a guest onboard! …but how did anyone even get _on_ the ship?”

Thor could almost hear the roll of eyes in Rocket’s reply. “Cool it, Quill. It’s just his brother.” A pause, and: “You should be more concerned about the fact it was _your_ bunk they were screwing in, anyway.”

The beginnings of a scream are dulled by Loki’s seiðr, as though some great screen has been pulled down between them. Thor pays it little heed, struck instead by the brilliant golden light now bathing the cockpit.

“Loki, I…”

And Loki presses close. His own arms go about him without thought, drawing him tight against his side: as though they are two twins born thus from the womb, never to be separated. So easily does Loki returns the gesture in kind, tilting his head, leaving them cheek to cheek.

“I told you thus,” he says, looking forward, eyes turned to brilliant fire by the supernova exploding before them. It should burn his eyes to blindness, but Thor does not care. Thor stares deep into its heart, and feels his own break in turn.

“ _The sun will shine upon us again_ ,” Thor murmurs. The words burn bittersweet upon his tongue, and he stares at his brother even as Loki looks only ahead. “But Loki…”

He turns, eyes shifting back to green, his smile small, soft. “What?”

“I thought you meant…well, not Asgard’s sun. Not that. But Midgard, perhaps…”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No.” And he bows his head, presses their brows together. “I mean, you _are_. Just not right now. I guess.”

Loki’s laughter ripples through him, easy, such a familiar sensation Thor cannot but press impossibly closer, seeking to be even more one side of the same being. And though he closes his eyes, the golden light still burns, an eternal flame that might never go out.

The slight shift of his brother’s weight has Thor tightening his arms. Loki sighs, long fingers shifting. “We can’t stay like this forever, brother.”

“Why not?” He keeps his eyes closed. “I’m content like this.”

“Yes, well, but I suspect the captain of this craft would not be as amenable to the idea.”

“I could be captain of the ship.” He grins, sudden and sly. “Can I borrow your daggers? It won’t take long.”

The gentle sweep of fingers over his side turns sharp, Loki pinching a wad of fat and skin between two fingers and thumb. Hard. Thor yelps, pulls instinctively away. Then he gives Loki the most perfect of his wounded pathetic looks.

“ _Brother_.”

“That doesn’t work on me anymore,” he claims, lofty and sure. And then Thor has him in a headlock, moving quick and easy.

“Yes, well, this always worked well enough when we were boys—” Suddenly he stops, pulls back, gone quite cold. Loki’s hand has moved to his neck, spasming there – and the words stutter out of him.

“Loki, I didn’t mean…I shouldn’t have…I…”

“Thor.” There’s a trace of agony to the words even as Loki shifts forward, capturing his cheeks between his hands. There, Loki looks directly into his eyes, shaking his head even as his brother continues to tremble. “Thor, that’s in the past.”

“I missed you so much.” It’s hoarse, hurting. “I don’t know how I lived without you.”

“But you did.” And his voice is falsely light, his eyes so deep Thor wishes to drown nowhere else but within them. “Not that it matters, now,” he whispers, and everything about him is now fierce, undeniable _truth_. “I’m here. And I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah, well. About that.”

Loki smiles, and Thor feels his stomach somersault; he’s seen that expression one too many times to know the chaos it inevitably precedes. “Loki—”

But as he turns, Loki’s already holding out one hand to Quill, his best courtly manners on perfect show. “Ah, you must be the captain. I do apologise for my unannounced arrival. I didn’t quite have the chance to introduce myself.”

Quill’s mouth works, and he snorts a breath out through his nose. “You could’ve _knocked_. Or something.”

“I much just prefer to open the door and step on through.” Loki’s smile still has that dangerous edge as he adds, “And then close the door on what came before that.”

His brow furrows. “Oh, great. So you talk weird Shakespeare crap like he does.”

“Yes, well.” Opening his eyes, Loki actually _bows_ , that great charlatan. “Our lives are all indeed a grand show. You’re welcome to watch, if you wish.”

“Welcome to…this is _my_ ship, buddy!”

Thor shakes his head, arm very tight about Loki’s waist as he hauls him closer. He’s not entirely sure if it’s for his comfort or Quill’s safety. “It’s _our_ ship,” he corrects, and Quill looks to be a moment from absolute implosion.

“Oh, for…” Now he throws his hands up, turning away, swearing as he does so. “Fuck this shit, I’m outta here.” Almost immediately he looks back, pointing a finger. “And don’t you _dare_ fuck in the captain’s chair. I mean it.”

As soon as he’s gone, Loki turns to him, cocks an eyebrow. “Shall we, then?”

It would be easy. But Thor gives it only a second’s thought before dismissing it utterly. “Perhaps later,” he says, and the word trembles upon his tongue, so very tender. “…because we _have_ later. Don’t we?”

Loki leans close, whispers the answer against his lips. “We have _forever_.”

It’s some time before they turn, again, to look again to the spectacle of the dying sun. Keeping his brother close by his side, Thor begins to think otherwise. Perhaps it’s not dying at all. It’s simply _changing_. Becoming something new. Being reborn.

He thinks can live with that.


End file.
